Displaced homeowners, 'hippie' land squatters discuss painful past

Saturday

Feb 17, 2018 at 12:01 AM

DAVE PIERCE

Editor's note: This story was originally published in the Pocono Record on August 12, 2001.

Decades after the federal government took private property for the ill-fated Tocks Island dam project, and 27 years after the last of the so-called squatters were evicted from what is now U.S. Park Service jurisdiction, players in the drama struggle to put it all into perspective.

For former squatter Miharu Lane, the occupation and experiment in an alternative lifestyle didn't constitute the best of times. While there, she struggled to provide for her new baby without benefit of tap water or electricity. There were other issues, too."For me personally it was very depressing because I couldn't work on my art," she said. "I couldn't afford art supplies."

Yet the experience of living in the Poconos made a positive impression. About a year after leaving Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and returning to New York City, Lane and her husband, Edward, came back and settled here.

Today they own a home in East Stroudsburg, and Miharu teaches art at East Stroudsburg University.

She is pleased the Tocks Island dam was defeated and that Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area was created, enabling everyone to enjoy recreation activities such as hiking, boating and picnicking.

"The fact it became a national recreation area was just perfect," she said. "If it was flooded I don't think we would have been able to enjoy things. The park belongs to us, all of us."

She emphasizes that 1971 was in the midst of a divisive era marked by U.S. involvement in Vietnam and frequent clashes over civil rights issues.

"At sometimes in our lives, we must make a stand and speak out against what we believe to be wrong," said Lane of the Tocks Island project. "This was my stand against the government that was spending millions of dollars to kill people in a foreign land."

Pete Pappalardo lost his boyhood Shawnee home to the project, yet can take solace in knowing the dam wasn't built.

"I actually worked hard against the dam construction," said Pappalardo. "It is the last free-flowing river east of the Mississippi. That should count for something."

But after all these years, the East Stroudsburg "townie" finds it "too annoying" to visit his former rural home or other parts of DWGNRA. "It's impossible for me to go down there," said Pappalardo. "I get hot under the collar whenever I see a uniform."

Pappalardo said he was confronted by a uniformed U.S. Park Service ranger while hunting in the park in 1980, the last time he was there. Though Pappalardo had his hunting license, the law required hunters to carry two forms of identification, and he was unable to produce a driver's license when asked.

When the ranger said "Pappalardo" sounded like one of the names of former valley residents the Park Service has on file, Pappalardo confirmed his family was among those evicted for what is now the park. In view of that fact, said the ranger, Pappalardo would receive just a warning, not a fine, for his infraction.

The ranger may have thought she was doing Pappalardo a favor, but Pappalardo looks upon the incident as yet another insult to injury. He says former residents should be issued special cards they could flash to Park Service authorities while visiting the park.

"They should have 'sorry cards' that you would put in your wallets, and whenever they stopped you, you'd show it and they would have to do a dance and say they're sorry."

Nancy Shukaitis' father lost his farm to the project, but she gained a lifetime of activism and public service. Initially a lonely voice in the wilderness, Shukaitis was the first and only opponent of the Tocks Island dam during a 1964 Congressional hearing. In 1965 she formed the anti-dam Delaware Valley Conservation Association.

In 1967, the longtime local Republican Party committeewoman was the first woman elected to the Monroe County Commissioners. She served as a commissioner through 1983, taking on all manner of public policy issues along the way.

"It was as good or maybe better than a college education," Shukaitis said of her political career.

She was there as the Army Corps began seizing 206 condemned private properties in the late 1960s, as federal official conducted a long campaign to remove the squatters, and for the beginning of the end of the Tocks Island dam proposal in the '70s and '80s as support from nearly all quarters evaporated.

"It went on too long and there was too much anguish and it turned a lot of people against their government," said Shukaitis.

Shukaitis and her husband, Joe, owned a farm four miles north of Shawnee, just outside the final boundaries for the ill-fated dam project, so they avoided being forced off the land. Her dad wasn't so fortunate, losing his farm as part of the government condemnation.

"He had to live with us," she said. "He became very ill and he had to live with us for the last 11 years" of his life.

Referring to the role of federal politicians in supporting the dam, she said, "They promised all sorts of things from it, and that's what got it into trouble."

She said distress caused by the government land-grab is responsible for at least two suicides of former landowners. But the resulting creation of a public recreation area does have merit, she added.

"It has been a move to save land for the public and see the way things used to be before the white man got a hold of it," Shukaitis said of DWGNRA. "I go out there a lot. I suppose in my subconscious mind I don't see any changes. The mountainside is still beautiful, and the river is still self-cleansing as it flows."

Gene Dickison literally lived life on the edge of the Tocks Island fight, growing up in Bushkill near Fernwood.

"We got to sit and watch while others got evicted," said Dickison, whose family's home was one mile outside the final boundary selected for the project. His grandmother wasn't so lucky; her homestead was taken by the government.

"You'd have no idea of the pain, the distrust," Dickison said. "It was an unfortunate series of government blunders. If they had just allowed the residents life rights to their property ... it could have changed the entire tenure of the project."

Now a Jackson Township resident, Dickison drove through Dingmans Ferry in the park recently and was overcome with sadness as he recalled all the stores and shops that had been lost.

"It was one of the sweetest little towns," he said of Dingmans Ferry in the old days. "It's a shock to the system to see it now."

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